Brokers aren’t worried about big bank rate cuts

Brokers aren’t worried about big bank rate cuts

And while the timing may seem suspect, with several industry organizations warning about an overheated market, brokers don’t believe the rate slashes – and furious media coverage – will have too much of an effect.

“No, I don’t think it will contribute to overheating the market. Rates have been so low for so long and 2.79 per cent isn’t even the lowest rate in the market right now,” Angelo Lograno of Premier Mortgage Centre told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “I think we’ve been up and down this road before for the last seven or eight years … it’s not going to change the debt structure; it may alleviate some interest cost to a client.”

But are regulators keeping a close eye? Not as close as they may have in the past.

“We constantly reinforce that it is the banks themselves that determine the risks they want to assume, risks they must subsequently measure, monitor and manage,” Jeremy Rudin, head of Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), said in a prepared speech to the International Finance Club of Montreal.